OSO, Wash. - Along a 2-mile stretch of Highway 530, the future should look something like this: Imagine driving down the road and seeing the centerline of the highway as a string of lights.
In fact, the future starts Friday night when after dark the lights that WSDOT crews have been planting all day will come to life. By the end of Saturday, it's hoped about 200 of the lights will be in the ground.
Chad Dornsife, a consultant with the Highway Safety Group of Nevada, represents the manufacturer, Astucia of London.
"You can see it up to 1,000 feet away," he said. "Even with an inch of snow or ice, you're still going to see the lane markings."
One of the reasons Highway 530 was selected is that it's been paved in recent years and does not have a centerline rumble strip cut into it. It's also a road that sees lots of rain and even snow.
While those yellow and orange centerline reflectors are still everywhere, they can be buried under snow and ice, and since they are usually set into a ground-out low spot in the highway so they aren't shaved off by snow plows, they can be hard to see in the rain once those hollow spots are flooded with water.
"We get most of our complaints on dark, rainy nights, and these are supposed to work better in the rain," said Steve Wehmeyer, Pavement Marking Supervisor for WSDOT's Northwest Region.
Dornsife claims that the lights will still show up through puddles and ice an inch thick, still emitting a glow that drivers can follow.
The solar-powered markers, which charge their batteries during the day from the sun and then drain those batteries by lighting up at night, are being provided free of charge in what Dornsife says is the first test of the system in North America. He says they normally cost about $50 each. It's costing the state's Transportation Department between $10,000 and $15,000 for the labor to install them.
The lights are expected to last between 5 and 7 years. WSDOT will study this stretch of road for 5 years to see if the lights can reduce the number of accidents.
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